Guard Brigades to Receive Alert for Iraq Deployment

American Forces Press Service ^ | Jim Garamone

[SandRat]

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2007 – About 13,000 National Guardsmen will be alerted for possible deployment to Iraq in fiscal 2008, a senior defense official said on background today.

Four National Guard brigade combat teams are likely to be alerted in the near future, the official said. If the decision is made to mobilize and deploy them, they would not leave until December 2007 at the earliest.

National Guard officials said that alerting a unit does not necessarily mean mobilization and deployment. “We want to give our soldiers all the advance notice we can so they can prepare their families, their friends and their employers for their possible deployment,” the official said.

The senior defense official said that any mobilization and deployment would be governed by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the judgments of commanders in the country. The four brigades are part of the normal fiscal 2008-2010 rotation.

Calling up National Guard brigades requires this advance notification. DoD will call up the brigades as whole units and not put them together from other units.

The lead time for identifying replacement forces for the fiscal 2008 to 2010 rotation, means there may still be additional units that DoD identifies for deployment long before these National Guard units deploy. DoD is still working on the fiscal 2007-2009 rotation.

The possibility of an alert is a prudent move. “What will be level of effort in January 2008?” the senior defense official asked. “Who knows? It will be determined by the conditions on the ground and the recommendations of the commanders that are there.”

Some of the National Guard units that may be alerted will fall sort of the “dwell time” policy goals for reserve units. The DoD goal is for reserve component units to serve one year deployed and five years at home.

DoD and the Army is looking beyond the flag of the unit, the official said, they are looking inside the unit and assessing the deployment histories of individual soldiers. Of the four brigades, roughly two-thirds of the soldiers have not deployed.

These units will only mobilize for a year, the official said. In the past, a unit’s training, deployment and demobilization meant that soldiers could be gone from their homes as long as 18 months.

The official said that a dwell time of one year to five for the reserves and one to three for the active component is about right. “But we know that as a nation at war we can’t always make those policy goals that we have for ourselves,” the official said.

With the changes to brigade structures in the active and reserve components, the official said future deployments will be closer to the goals. The way the Army is building modularity, the service should end up with the ability to sustain a significant level of effort and forces and still maintain the dwell time, the official said.

[middie]

The Prez misuse of the Guard and reserve borders on criminality.

[CPT Clay]

I knew that you’d get this posted.

Thanks

Anybody know which BDE’s these are yet?

[Cogadh na Sith]

What’s the alternative?

[SandRat]

Have not seen that yet but, then I’ve not been to the National Guard website yet either to see if they have it up. Of course, for OPSEC reasons, that may... be a little close holed at the moment.

[middie]

The answer: Since universal recrimination and constant public rebuke at the incompetence of Bush and his administration would be satisfying viserally but not resolve the disaster they've wrought, the myriad of problems seem to command a prospective application.

First, would be a massive increase in the acquisition of basic war fighting materiel' such as armored wheeled/tracked troop tranport and add to the C-130J and C-17 fleets; increase the budgetary allocation to repair and refurbish facilities for vehicles, tanks, electronic and communications gear; and enhance our sea lift and air mobility capacities. Second, if we're really going to change our foreign and military policies to be based on a preemptive war theory, the all volunteer force is an anachronistic and useless methodology for both readiness and multiple deployments.

The 21st Century world leadship and policing function that either we've assumed or been thrust into would seem to demand a larger standing force. That, in turn, madates a return to universal military conscription and service. The ''hip'' response to the idea of a draft is a knee-jerk quip about involuntary servitude, etc. and so on. All of that clap-trap foolishness is easily overcome with a degree of inspirational and efficient leadership that is unknown and, apparently, unknowable to the Bush group that fooled us twice - - (eg: ''Help is on the way..'' Dick Cheney to a audience of military personnel). Of course, there doesn't appear to be a Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK or FDR on the horizon, so that solution is problematic. Nonetheless, every person benefitting from the freedoms and blessing of his/her nation-state owes a measure of service and aiding in the nation's defense.

While I wasn't in the chain of command of draftees during my 30+ years, I was an observer of that scene and noted that they served well if they had competent officer and NCO leadership. I believe the whole ranting and mongering about the draft is vastly overdone.

As for the civilian sector, this administration, even though they started a war and made, and continue to make, huge demands on the national treasury, hasn't provided for sufficient funding. There should be a war tax dedicated solely to the training, supplying and supporting the force and to finance the expensive warfighting tools that exist today.

Thus far no one on the home front, other than those who've lost relatives, children, spouses or friends, has sacrificed anything. We have created a wall between the civilian population (us) and the armed forces members (them) that is clearly discernible. Except for the perfunctory bumper sticker asserting 'support for the troops', no one at home has endured one instance or moment of personal sacrifice. If we're really engaged in a worldwide war on terror (an ambiguous term at best), it is not merely rhetorical to ask: Where is the sacrifice of the folks at home?

A real leader in the White House would not be suffering from the critical schism that is part, but certainly not all, or even most, of the reason he has become both impotent and irrelevant. Had he kept out of warfighting and support the abundance of political machinations that he loosed Karl Rove to engage in I believe the war in Iraq (aside from probably not happening at all) would have been fought more effective and efficiently and more troops would have been employed in both war zones.

These are neither novel nor previously unspoken retrospective ideas. They are sound and rationally based. That's likely the reason why the cabal in the White House and the Rumsfeld evil dictatorship at DoD paid them no attention.

[Cogadh na Sith]

Thanks for the long response, but all it said was "Bush is bad", "We need more planes", "We need a draft" and "We need higher taxes". It sounds like the usual leftist non-solution solutions

We're not going to get anymore materiel because over half of the defense budget is spent on dependents and retirees and %85 of all taxes is spent on wealth redistribution. So forget that.

What your saying is that you'd rather spend materiel, troops and treasure on policing the No-Fly-Zone in perpetuity instead of actually solving the problem.

Calling an elected US president and his secretaries 'a cabal' is just f'in stupid.

I'll bet you're good for an anti-Israel rant too....

and really, what did any of your response have to do with 'misusing the National Guard'?

[CPT Clay]

I’ve seen OK, and Arkansas one other I forget and one to be named.